AFTER THE WEDDING DAY

Marriage is a way of life and a vocation. What will sustain couples when the high and the hoopla of the wedding day have died down? What will support their life together?

Marriage is a way of life requiring attention. Marriage is relational. Spouses need to spend quality time with each other to listen, to discuss, and to enjoy each other. People need to pay attention to each other's laughter and tears, hopes and disappointments. Marriage is a kind of mutual iconography. Like carefully painted and precious icons, each spouse mirrors divine love and covenant commitment to the other and to the world.

Marriage is a way of life requiring affirmation. Marriage is mutual. It is hard work, too. No one flourishes when ridiculed or harshly criticized. No one wants to hear married life demeaned, dissed, or dismissed. Each spouse has insecurities. Each person struggles with self-esteem. A partner needs to ask for and to hear words such as Thank you, I love you, and you look nice in those colors. Words alienate and words affirm. Words hurt and words heal.

Marriage is a way of life requiring affection. Marriage is holy passion. Every person needs to be cared for, held, and touched. A sex therapist once told me, "the primary sex organ is skin." There are no graduate courses in touch. Each spouse learns and teaches touch. Affectionate touch develops genuine trust. Sometimes people who marry know little of the other spouse's history of touch. Touch can conjure up past experiences of terrifying abuse or it can craft new narratives of spousal abuse. There is joy when couples testify to an affectionate touch that brings comfort and that heals body and soul.

Marriage is a way of life requiring negotiation. Marriage is dialogical. Every couple learns how to argue and to discuss, how to agree and to differ. Words intentionally and inadvertently wound. Couples have to develop strategies of forgiveness and styles of reconciliation. Simmering hurt, stored up anger, and icy resentment distance partners and destroy their relationship.

Marriage is a way of life requiring spirituality. Marriage is empowerment. Couples who reach out generously to other couples empower others to move beyond self-absorbed lifestyles. Couples who encourage other couples enable charity and self-donation. Couples develop spiritually when they pray at home and join the church at prayer on Sunday. Friendship with Christ fosters virtues like compassion and mercy, justice and charity. A couple's integrity and character permeate their dealings with others. In time, marriage manifests holiness.

Marriage is a way of life requiring service. Marriage is generosity. Couples have choices: couch potato or public service. Some couples are blessed with children. Children up the ante on parental generosity and self-sacrifice. Other couples donate their treasure, offer their time, and share their talent in public and civil service. Benevolence to the poor and the suffering brings blessing to a couple. Direct ministry to the sick, to the imprisoned, to the homeless, to the divorced, and to the widowed is concrete testimony that God's reign is breaking in. Rolling up one's sleeves and joining hands in service testifies that God's cause, plan, and will are being done on earth as it is in heaven. Generous service expands a couple's horizons and builds up a couple's social and spiritual capital.